Embossed plastic cards are a necessary link in the chain of data handling in mercantile establishment, health care facilities, law enforcement facilities, and numerous other applications. It is also the instrument for imprinting documents such as sales drafts, hospital forms, traffic violations, etc. Significantly, it is recognized as an accurate and valid form of identification. Once imprinted, the information from the card enters a data stream for various uses as is generally known in the art.
There is a need for a secure, tamper proof, record bearing assembly in which a preprepared transparency, micro film or other man or machine readable record member is placed on an embossable base member for later enlargement, reproduction, or visible inspection. There is also a need to encapsulate the record member for protection against damage and against tampering.
The present methods of mounting encapsulating record members on a base member suffer from a number of disadvantages. The principal disadvantages are that they are difficult and costly to fabricate, and the encapsulation is relatively easy to enter, and either remove or replace the record member without subsequent detection.